Legit Reviews

Since the Sony rootkit scandal in 2005, people have become increasingly
aware that studios do not respect consumers' privacy rights.

One current example of this lack of regard is a much ballyhooed feature
now being offered on certain discs called BD-Live, a feature that to a
certain extent had been established already in the now defunct high
definition format, HD-DVD. The apparent intent of BD-Live is to download
several megabytes of additional content other than the main movie, such
as "extras" or "audio comments", over an online connection. However,
these extras are features that consumers should have expected to find on
their costly Blu-ray discs in the first place. After all, 50GB allows
for a lot of space on this medium for special features.

Adding to consumers' confusion is the fact that
a significant number of Blu-ray players do not provide the option to
disable BD-Live at the user's request: the supposedly extra Blu-ray
content fires off and automatically downloads without asking the user's
permission. And so, many film fans are left to sit--shocked, puzzled,
and bewildered in front of their television sets--oblivious to the
reason why it is taking so bloody long for the film to finally begin
playing.

The upset consumer is left to rightly ponder why her expensive equipment
is taking a foolishly long time to "do Blu."

One can only presume that the primary motivation behind this farce is
"getting closer" to the customer, or, in other words, the studios would
like to know exactly how often and when their disc buyers are looking at
which film.

Peer van Heuen, the head of development at SlySoft, indicates, "when we
took a closer look at the first of these disk types we were absolutely
dumbfounded. Sometimes the films actually contacted the manufacturer and
did so with the user not knowing about it or even being in a position to
recognize that a download connection was taking
place. I assume that a significant percentage of these film buyers don't
know what to make of the little BD-Live logo on the package or even
recognize what that logo implies.

In other words, hardly anyone expects that a Blu-ray disc makes a
`telephone call home' while it’s being played. The circumstances and
manner whereby unwitting consumers are maliciously and insidiously
eavesdropped upon might get the attention of data, security and/or
personal privacy experts in some countries eventually."

In the current version of AnyDVD HD there is an opportunity to disable
BD-Live, and, in this way, the personal privacy of the spied-upon consumer
is restored. Similarly, the other points in the change log are
impressive and noteworthy: new variations of "region locks" can now be
removed from menus, and new versions of BD+ are supported as well.

The update for AnyDVD HD is, as usual at SlySoft, free of charge for
registered users.

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6.4.7.9 2008 10 31
- New (DVD): Added support for new protections
- New (Blu-ray): Added option to disable BD-Live
- New (Blu-ray): Added removal of region locks from menus
- New (Blu-ray): Added support for new version of the BD+ copy protection
- Fix (Blu-ray): Playback issues with ArcSoft TMT
- Fix (Blu-ray): Issues with some titles, e.g. "American Gangster"
- Some minor fixes and improvements
- Updated languages